By Barry Rubin

I’m not going to bash or rant about a Newsweek article about Turkey by Owen Matthews–shocking and dangerous as it is–but rather talk about what is wrong and inaccurate about it. That article is part of a new wave of defeatism sweeping the West, though it still remains subordinate to the more ostensibly attractive idea that there is no real conflict or at least one easy to fix by Western concessions.

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By Barry Rubin

The story of the U.S. engagement with Syria and the sanctions issue regarding Iran’s nuclear program are fascinating. Each day there’s some new development showing how the Obama Administration is acting like a deer standing in the middle of a busy highway admiring the pretty automobile headlights.

Or to put it a different way, it is like watching the monster sneak up behind someone. Even though you know he’s not going to turn around, you can’t help but watch in fascinated horror and yelling out: “Look out!” But he pays no attention.

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by Daniel Pipes*

The arrest and indictment of top military figures in Turkey last week precipitated potentially the most severe crisis since Atatürk founded the republic in 1923. The weeks ahead will probably indicate whether the country continues its slide toward Islamism or reverts to its traditional secularism. The denouement has major implications for Muslims everywhere.

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By Barry Rubin

After more than 30 years of watching people write dumb things about the Middle East, I believe that in the last month I’ve seen more nonsense than at any previous time. The problem arises from ignorance, lack of understanding of the region by those presented as experts; plus arrogance, treating the region and the lives of people as a game (Hey, let’s try this and see what happens!), fostered by the failure of such control mechanisms as a balanced debate and editing that rejects simplistic bias or stupidity; as well as a simple lack of logic.

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by Phyllis Chesler

In Turkey — a country which was nearly accepted as a member by the European Union — a father and grandfather recently buried Medine Memi, a sixteen-year-old girl, alive — and all because she was seen talking to boys. Medine was repeatedly beaten. The police did not help her. When the men buried her she was “alive and fully conscious.”

This savage, heartless, primitive act is the ultimate, logical consequence of burying women alive — shrouding them — while they still roam the earth. One becomes claustrophobic under the burqa, until one gets used to being seen as a ghost, invisible, non-human, dead.

All this past week, I received news of this atrocity in Turkey. I refrained from writing about it. What can one say? There is nothing to say. There is everything to do. No one is doing anything. Continue reading…

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By Barry Rubin

Turkey used to be a secular state striving for modernization and a place in the Western world. That dream is turning into a nightmare. The AKP regime, despite its pretense of being a center-right, family values, good government party, is moving Turkey toward Islamism. Washington and the West in general doesn’t seem to notice though horrified Turkish secularists and liberals are yelling for help.

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By Barry Rubin

The Turkey-Israel alliance is over. After two decades plus of close cooperation, the Turkish government is no longer interested in maintaining close cooperation with Israel nor is it–for all practical purposes–willing to do anything much to maintain its good relations with Israel.

The U.S.-Turkish alliance, which goes back about six decades, is also over but much less visibly so, though the two relationships are interlinked.

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by Daniel Pipes*

“There is no doubt he is our friend,” Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, says of Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as he accuses Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman of threatening to use nuclear weapons against Gaza. These outrageous assertions point to the profound change of orientation by Turkey’s government, for six decades the West’s closest Muslim ally, since Erdoğan’s AK party came to power in 2002.

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by David Capezza*

Analysts generally consider military influence in politics and society to be a critical impediment to the development of democratic political and civil rights and freedoms. According to Freedom House, for example, greater military involvement in government politics decreases civil liberties and political rights in any given country; this infringes on a government’s ability to develop democracy.[1]

Turkey may be an exception. The military has deep roots in society, and its influence predates the founding of the republic. But rather than hinder democratization, Turkey’s military remains an important component in the checks and balances that protect Turkish democracy. Herein lies an irony: European officials have made diminishment of military influence a key reform in Turkey’s European Union accession process. This may be a noble goal, but by insisting on dismantling the military role in Turkish society without advancing a new mechanism to guarantee the constitution, well-meaning reformers may actually undercut the stability of Turkey as a democracy.

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A briefing by Soner Cagaptay*

Soner Cagaptay is director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert on Turkish-Israeli relations. He earned his Ph.D. from Yale, taught at Princeton, and contributes regularly to leading news outlets. On April 9, Mr. Cagaptay addressed the Middle East Forum via conference call.

To illustrate how Turkey has changed under AK Party rule (the “Justice and Development” party), Soner Cagaptay highlighted the fact that, before the AKP came to power in 2002 elections, Turkey “worked as a normal country,” exhibiting qualities more in line with non-Muslim, secular nations.

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by Yücel Güçlü*

The debate over what happened to Armenians in World War I-era Ottoman Anatolia continues to polarize historians and politicians. Armenian historians argue that Ottoman forces killed more than one million Armenians in a deliberate act of genocide.[1] Other historians — most famously Bernard Lewis and Guenter Lewy — acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died but question whether this was a deliberate act of genocide or rather an outgrowth of fighting and famine.[2] In recent decades, the debate has shifted from academic to legislative grounds. In 2001, the French parliament voted to recognize an Armenian genocide.[3] In 2007, U.S. political leaders narrowly averted an Armenian genocide resolution in the House of Representatives. While Armenian activists lobby politicians to recognize an Armenian genocide formally, which is likely to be a first step toward a demand for collective reparations, and genocide studies scholars seek to close the book on the Armenian narrative, it is ironic that many of the archives that contain documentation from the period remain untapped.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

U.S. President Barack Obama is repeating the same mistakes made by many Western leaders: Refusing to acknowledge in any way that our greatest enemy, radical Islam, is connected to Islam, and believing that making nice with enemies will make them our friends. Just what did Mr. Obama mean today when he said, speaking before the Turkish parliament?:

… the United States is not — and will never be — at war with Islam… In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical not just in rolling back the violent ideologies that people of all faiths reject but also to strengthen opportunities for all people. …

Who said the U.S. was “at war with Islam?” Certainly not President Bush. Why is Mr. Obama grovelling before the Muslim World, “20, 30, 40 and even 50%” of which is hostile to the West? Islamist homicide bombers use dynamite. Are we at war with dynamite or it with us?

The ruling AKP, led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has steadily been moving Turkey towards Islamism, and away from the country’s democratic and secular roots, as created by Kemal Atatürk (see here and here).

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by Daniel Pipes*

Smack on its 60^th anniversary, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization finds itself facing a completely novel problem – that of radical Islam, as represented by the Republic of Turkey, within its own ranks.

Ankara joined NATO in 1951 and shortly after Turkish forces fought valiantly with the allies in Korea. Turks stood tough against the Soviet Union for decades. Following the United States, Turkey has the second-largest number of troops in the alliance.

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by Tuncay Babalı*

Turkey is increasingly at the crossroads of the world energy trade. Because of tanker traffic through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, Turkey has become an important north-south oil transit route. The Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan (BTC) oil and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) natural gas pipelines make Turkey an important east-west route as well. Economic opportunities, however, can present diplomatic liabilities. As the importance of Turkey’s energy sector has grown, Turkey has come under increasing pressure. Turkey finds itself caught between competing U.S. and Russian interests as a result of the August 2008 Georgia conflict. Turkish-Iranian energy trade has also brought Washington’s ire down on Turkey. Turkey’s efforts to minimize problems with its neighbors may make it popular with some, but it has led others to question the strength of the U.S.-Turkish strategic partnership. Analysis of Ankara’s options show that it has little choice besides greater caution and engagement, and that energy concerns rather than a reassessment of its Western ties motivate its outreach to Russia and, to a certain extent, Iran.

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By Barry Rubin

President Barack Obama has made Turkey one of the first countries he’s visiting, intending to show support for what he thinks is a model moderate Muslim-majority democracy. Unfortunately, his presence and words will reinforce a regime that is increasingly Islamist, close to radical states, and encouraging anti-American propaganda at home.

A big effect of his visit will be to demoralize the opposition, both left and right, which interprets it as endorsing the party in power. He will thus help entrench a regime which is bad for U.S. interests and bad for Turkey.

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